Caucus campaigns in Iowa gearing up for final push

JOHNSTON - The preparation is complete and the end is near.

Now is the time to make a move and finish strong.

That's how veteran political operative Brad Anderson on Thursday described campaigns' hopes as they gird for the final weeks leading to the Feb. 1 Iowa caucuses.

Anderson, who directed Barack Obama's re-election effort in Iowa in 2012 and worked on John Edwards' 2008 campaign, and Eric Woolson, who managed Mike Huckabee's victorious 2008 campaign in Iowa and has worked for numerous other campaigns, discussed closing sprints Thursday during recording of this week's episode of 'Iowa Press” on Iowa Public Television.

Anderson said campaigns have two missions in the coming weeks.

'You need two things: You need the ground game, and then you need the candidate to catch fire,” said Anderson, who is supporting Hillary Clinton's campaign this year.

Anderson said ideally those two things work in harmony: When a candidate surges and gains interest, a strong campaign organization is well-equipped to secure new supporters.

As an example, Anderson noted Edwards' late surge in 2004, when the candidate had a surprising second-place finish in Iowa. He recalled an event in Altoona shortly after Edwards was endorsed by Ed Skinner, a longtime Democratic activist who died this year.

'The reason we were able to come in second place was because we had the ground game in place to capture that fire,” Anderson said. 'We had, I think, 1,500, 2,000 people show up at this Altoona event. And we would have never been able to capture all their info, sign everyone in, if we didn't already have a ground game in place.”

Woolson said tapping into that enthusiasm is critical for a caucus campaign.

'When you've got people walking through the door, when you've got people that say, ‘I want to sign up. I want to do something. Don't just put my name on your list of supporters, but give me something to do,'” Woolson said. 'It really is just building, brick by brick, an organization that has a very strong foundation and then again catches fire there at the end.”

Woolson said one of the key unanswered questions of this race is whether supporters of Republican candidate Donald Trump and Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders will line up behind other candidates within the party if theirs does not secure the nomination.

Anderson said there is a similar, unanswered question within the Democratic primary: to which candidate will Martin O'Malley's supporters defect if he does not achieve viability on caucus night?

'So that is a question, of whether or not there is going to be some alliance between the O'Malley people and a candidate,” Anderson said. 'I don't know. That is for the campaigns to decide.”